About
This is the story of the Hasting family-their secrets, their loves and losses, dreams and heartbreaks-captured in a seamless series of individual moments that span the years between the first World War and the present. The novel opens in 1914 as William, a young factory worker, spends one last evening at home before his departure for the navy…His son Billy, grows into a champion cyclist and will ride into the D-Day landings on a military bicycle…His son in turn, Will, struggles with a debilitating handicap to become an Oxford professor in the 1960s…And finally, young Billie Hastings makes a life for herself as an artist in contemporary London. Just as the names echo down through the family, so too does the legacy of choices made, chances lost, and truths long buried.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"Jo Baker is a novelist with a gift for intimate and atmospheric storytelling… She skillfully delineates the currents of social change and the essential human drama that persists…The result is an agile, keenly observed novel that evokes the minuscule rewards and disappointments of the everyday."
Financial Times
"Has a quiet, cumulative power; you read it not quite realizing how it's burrowing under your skin…Demonstrates a real mastery of language, from the way the book's phrases subtly become more up-to-date as time passes, to the stream-of-consciousness Baker effortlessly slips into as the characters experience moments of great emotion or excitement…Moving but never sentimental."
Seattle Times
"Gripping and ruthless…The main characters are fully realized, with each personality becoming a force field and the language warping around them. Baker is skilled at evoking not only the distinctive social circumstances of the settings but the essential nature of each character…You can't walk away from her book."
New York Times Book Review